A timely lesson from history for Mr Cameron

Margaret Thatcher's first term shows the importance of sticking to your chosen
course of action.

The Cabinet papers for 1980, released by the National Archives today under the 30-year rule, demonstrate the difficulties faced by Margaret Thatcher's first government, which at the beginning of the decade was just six months old. Then, as now, the public finances had been left in such a mess by a Labour administration that drastic action was needed to bring them under control. Deep cuts in spending were proposed, while arguments raged over the burgeoning costs of health care and pensions. Ten years earlier, another Conservative administration – led by Edward Heath – had inherited a similarly inauspicious set of circumstances, and vowed to take the tough and unpopular decisions needed to rectify matters. But within two years, it had staged a volte-face, dumping the radical reforms that had been promised and reverting to a policy of corporatism, interventionism and reflation. By the end of the decade, inflation was running above 20 per cent.

Mrs Thatcher had arrived in Downing Street determined to avoid making the same mistakes. Yet as the released papers show, her first full year was dominated by the siren voices of gloom and foreboding. She faced hostility from powerful figures within her own Cabinet; the pressure for a Heath-style about-turn became intense. Eventually, in October 1980, Mrs Thatcher took on her critics at the Conservative Party conference, famously insisting that "the lady's not for turning".

Thirty years on, and yet another government is required to clear up after a period of Labour profligacy and incompetence. In many ways, David Cameron has it easier than Mrs Thatcher. She was confronted by far more militant trade unions, which sought to thwart the government's reforms through strikes and industrial disruption. (Indeed, it was her subsequent union reforms that provided a platform for the economic revival of a country previously dubbed the sick man of Europe.) Britain is also a far more prosperous country than it was then, and the fact that Mr Cameron leads a coalition government means that the tough decisions that need to be taken cannot be laid entirely at the door of the Tories, despite Labour's best endeavours.

In other ways, however, Mr Cameron's task is every bit as daunting. Reversing Labour's deliberate – and costly – expansion of the state is a challenge on a par with anything undertaken 30 years ago, not least because it means defeating a culture of centralisation ingrained deep within the British political psyche. If there is one lesson to be gleaned from these papers, it is the importance of plotting a course and sticking to it, however stormy the seas may get.